New Laws:

[gerry]

R.I.P contract bridge.

 

If you havnt already go to

http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/2007laws.asp

 

and have a look at law 40.

 

In a nutshell, the morons in (insert neme ofyour local national body) now have the ability to force ever pair in every tournament to play ANY system they deem appropriate. If they decide that preemtive jump raises are out then they are out. If they decide that all pairs in some events WILL play 16-18 no trump 5 card majors and no conventions they can.

 

The genie is out of the bottle folks. The system nazis have for years been bemoaning the fact that they could only regulate conventional calls: now they can do what they like.

 

Trust me, in twenty years the only people left playing will be professionals and their little old lady sponsors. Everyone else will have long since given up in disgust after repeatedly been told by administrators how they must bid.

 

 

GOR HELP US ALL

 

 

yours in deep disgust and sadness

 

 

Gerry

[gwnn]

Sounds like a little exaggerated.

[helene_t]

We've had this discussion already.

 

With currect regulations, the BFs can outlaw conventional responses to weak notrump openings, thereby effectively outlawing weak notrump. In fact some BFs do excactly that.

 

The new laws are a bid clearer, since you won't have to rant so much about whether a particular agreement counts as a "convention" or not.

[1eyedjack]

Just because the sponsoring organisations have extra powers delegated to them under the principal laws, it does not necessarily follow that those powers will be exercised in such a manner as to minimise the popularity of the game.

 

Broadly speaking, the sponsoring organisations have a vested interest in maximising the playing population, so the reverse effect is more likely (leaving aside the possibility of incompetence).

 

The problem comes where the minority interests within the game (of which elite players might be a category) find that their preferences are not served. Most players can find one or more minority categories into which they fit.

 

In a nutshell, players have two powers available to them: They have limited democratic powers to appoint officials to represent them within the sponsoring organisation, and failing satisfaction on that front they can vote with their feet. I am confident that if it came to the latter in droves, as feared by the OP, then in no short order the offending policies would be reversed.

[gerry]

I dont think my post is exaggerated at all. Our local NBO has repeatedly attempted to regulate natural bids, for example we have a rule on the books that for certain classes of tournaments a weak 2 opening in a major MUST have six cards. They have been told that this is not in their power under the current laws. The reply people (not just I) have received was that "this will be rectified under the new laws". I didnt realise what they meant by that until now.

 

The argument that NBOs can currently effectively outlaw natural bids by forbidding conventional follow ups is fine for certain bids, but some treatments, like preemptive jump raises, rarely require conventional follow ups.

 

I believe that this is a whole new ball game. In the past most administrators have worked within the spirit and intent of the laws. The spirit of the new law is entirely different than previously. A special understanding is any agreement that, in the opinion of the regulating authority, a significant number (how many?) of opponents might not anticipate.

 

I am sorry, but in my opinion the ability to regulate natural calls will have huge ramifications. What about this scenario: two new but keen players who have learned to play from reading about the game decide to have a crack at the local club (this is how I learned incidentally), they know no conventions but rather bid more or less by the seat of their pants, mentioning long suits and bidding no trumps when balanced or when out of suits to bid. Are they going to run foul of the new laws? You betya. Who is going to tell them they are not allowed to bid what they think they can make but must conform to the some complicated arbitrary set of rules based on a mechanism for valuing their hands that they havnt even heard of (they dont know what points are yet, lucky sods).

 

People who have a power may not misuse that power, sure, but they might, dont we have constitutions and separation of powers etc etc precisely to help mitigate against this possibility?

 

Anyway sorry to rant for so long. Personally I will be ignoring any regulation that tells me how to bid naturally. I am sure I will find a few people down home who will be doing the same. The only way to change a bad law is to flout it.

[Hanoi5]

I think you have other means to 'combat' this situation.

 

The first I'd recommend is: be part of your NBO. That way you can be one of the people who take decisions.

 

Secondly, you can move to another country and play where your 'conventions' are allowed.

 

Finally, you might try convincing the folk in your country (not only the ones governing the NBO but many of the players) that this or that convention is not 'bad'. Education, as usual, is the best solution to a problem.

[helene_t]

I share you sentiments (somewhat), Gerry, but some people want to ban everything except for their own pet methods, and they will find loopholes anyway.

 

I think there is a case for the WBF making very specific laws, because they have the law-science resources to assure that the laws make sense. I also think there could be a case for granting some autonomy to SOs and/or RBs because bridge cultures may differ.

 

What I don't like is situations like the one in the Amsterdam district, where a local BoD without sufficient law-science resources has made some rules that are clearly illegal (and suck for a number of other reasons as well). Not sure what WBF could or should do avoid such a situation. A large SO like the Dutch BF ought to be able to deal with it, but I can imagine smaller SOs would need tighter WBF regulation.

[hrothgar]

I dont think my post is exaggerated at all. Our local NBO has repeatedly attempted to regulate natural bids, for example we have a rule on the books that for certain classes of tournaments a weak 2 opening in a major MUST have six cards. They have been told that this is not in their power under the current laws. The reply people (not just I) have received was that "this will be rectified under the new laws". I didnt realise what they meant by that until now.

 

The argument that NBOs can currently effectively outlaw natural bids by forbidding conventional follow ups is fine for certain bids, but some treatments, like preemptive jump raises, rarely require conventional follow ups.

I don't think that you understand the extend of the authority delegated to local sponsoring authorities under Law 40D.

 

Hypothetically, a sponsoring organization could pass a regulation like the following:

 

Any partnership playing weak jump shifts may not use conventional responses over their 1NT opening. Members of the WBF LAws committee are on record as saying that a sponsoring organization can do whatever they damn well please so long as it involves regulation a convention.

 

I specifically asked whether a sponsoring organization could pass the following regulation:

 

"Players whose last name starts with an R may not use conventions over their 1NT opening". Members of the Laws committee said that they couldn't fathom why a sponsoring organization would want to pass such a law, but that this was within their power under 40D.

[helene_t]

I suppose it's clear to (almost) everybody that disalowing conventional responses to weak notrump openings is, while not against the letter of the law, clearly against the spirit of the law.

 

With the new law, this is not the case anymore.

[awm]

Really, it was possible to pass ridiculous regulations before this change. My hope is that the change will help remove some fuzzy areas, for example:

 

How about a 3♣ opening which shows 3+♣, a weak hand, and "enough shape to preempt to the three level"? Usually this means 6+♣, or 3♣ and 6+ in some other suit, or maybe 5-5 clubs and another, or 3♣ and 5-5 in two side suits. Pretty annoying, basically a "multi with any suit" and something that most places might like to disallow. But hey, it's a natural bid right? Shows three clubs, willing to play in clubs (if undoubled anyway), doesn't promise any particular length in any other suit? Of course, people can make convoluted arguments about how this is really conventional, but isn't it much easier to just give out the authority to regulate such nonsense?

 

I think it would be nice to get some of this complexity and ambiguity out of the regulations, and a laws change was needed to do it. I agree that it's possible to outlaw things that really should be allowed, but to a great degree this was possible anyway. Many places have regulations that might confuse a novice player, and some places were installing regulations to try to "effectively ban" natural bids that were deemed confusing (ekrens twos maybe a victim of this in some places).

[david_c]

The argument that NBOs can currently effectively outlaw natural bids by forbidding conventional follow ups is fine for certain bids, but some treatments, like preemptive jump raises, rarely require conventional follow ups.

No problem: we can just say "if you make a pre-emptive jump raise, you may not make any conventional calls for the rest of the session." :)

 

Seriously, as others have said, at the moment if authorities really want to ban something they can always find a way around the restriction. And some of them just ignore it completely, which is illegal, but they don't seem to care. So this "change" to the Laws doesn't allow NBOs to do anything that they weren't doing already.

 

Personally I think it is right that these things should be decided at local level.

[cherdano]

I think you are picking the wrong fight. Let's say a club wants to hold SAYC-only individual tournament for beginners. Why on earth should the laws of contract bridge (which have no idea about the intention of such a regulation) prohibit this?

 

You really should pick up this fight with your national bridge organization. They are the ones directly responsible to the players in their tournaments, not the WBF laws commission. There is no reason why the WBF commission should overrule what the tournament organizers want to do.

[han]

Agree with Arend, if a club wants to hold some restricted event, why should that not be allowed?

[jtfanclub]

Agree with Arend, if a club wants to hold some restricted event, why should that not be allowed?

Or for that matter, if I want my club to be 2/1 Only, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

[gerry]

Agree with Arend, if a club wants to hold some restricted event, why should that not be allowed?

Or for that matter, if I want my club to be 2/1 Only, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Because that is changing the very nature of the game. It should be called modified bridge or restricted bridge or some such in the same way that there is Fischer chess.

 

If you decided that your club would not have bidding at all but rather that the dealer must open 3nt and play there, would you still call that bridge? It is allowed under the new laws

[gerry]

I suppose it's clear to (almost) everybody that disalowing conventional responses to weak notrump openings is, while not against the letter of the law, clearly against the spirit of the law.

 

With the new law, this is not the case anymore.

Exactly, previously the ethics of most administrators would inhibit them from pulling stunts like forbidding you from playing stayman because of some other feature of your system. Now they are no longer restrained and can go to town with a clear conscience.

[gerry]

Agree with Arend, if a club wants to hold some restricted event, why should that not be allowed?

Or for that matter, if I want my club to be 2/1 Only, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Sorry, me again,

 

Because its fundamentally impossible to do. What do you do when player A and B disagree on what sayc is ? You are going to have to rule on every auction that comes up individually, thus essentially defining sayc. Taken to its logical conclusions every table will bid the same way to the same contract. Why have bidding at all, just give them a travelling slip specifying the auction in advance.

[awm]

As far as I can tell, the new laws do not give the authority to regulate people's bids, only the authority to regulate people's agreements.

 

So you can't just "specify the final contract" -- bridge does not work that way.

 

On the other hand, you can require that everyone agree to play a specific system if you want. This will still leave room for judgement (people can psych, people can evaluate hands differently, etc).

 

The way things stood before these new laws, it was possible to regulate only conventions or bids at the one level with a king less than average strength. But these rules were very fuzzy because the definition of convention was sort of fuzzy. While some things were obviously conventional, a lot of agreements fell into the gray areas (i.e. ekrens two bids). It seems better to remove this fuzziness and just say "you can regulate agreements."

 

Admittedly this opens the door for people banning four-card majors, or five-card preempts. However, I don't see why anyone would do this (after all, everybody's goal is to promote bridge right?) nor do I necessarily see a problem with a specific event (i.e. individual) which mandates a particular system. It's also hard to argue that opening your longest suit (for example) would be "highly unexpected" or "hard to understand" for most bridge players...

[gerry]

Admittedly this opens the door for people banning four-card majors, or five-card preempts. However, I don't see why anyone would do this (after all, everybody's goal is to promote bridge right?)

One might think so, however as the powers that be in NZ are the same ones who thought the following was OK

 

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=21511&hl=

 

I dont hold out much hope.

[cherdano]

Agree with Arend, if a club wants to hold some restricted event, why should that not be allowed?

Or for that matter, if I want my club to be 2/1 Only, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Because that is changing the very nature of the game. It should be called modified bridge or restricted bridge or some such in the same way that there is Fischer chess.

 

If you decided that your club would not have bidding at all but rather that the dealer must open 3nt and play there, would you still call that bridge? It is allowed under the new laws

How about an Individual world championship? If you want to make this a serious event, you pretty much have to announce a system, and then it is a reasonable idea to make it a rule that nobody can deviate from the given set of agreements, when they happen to sit opposite a regular partner.

 

If the WBF law commission decides that this "should not be called bridge", what would happen? Well, probably nobody would care, everybody would still call it bridge, and the net effect would just be to make the WBF laws less relevant.

 

Anyway, what you want is that a political decision is made by a committee which does not exist to make political decisions, but just to ensure that there is a uniform standard of basic procedures and rules.

[gerry]

As far as I can tell, the new laws do not give the authority to regulate people's bids, only the authority to regulate people's agreements.

 

So you can't just "specify the final contract" -- bridge does not work that way.

True, but in reality regulating agreements IS regulating people's bids. Any non new partnership has imlicit agreements about everything. My partnerships understandings about when to open 1H might well be too hard for a new player to understand and if there are a few of them in the field they can tell us our understanding is 'special' and ban it. That applies to every call we make. They can now decide that all of them are special understandings. They can keep deciding that until we transform our system into exactly what they desire.

 

They certainly can regulate style and hand evaluation also, this is not hard to do in the new laws. A rule such as "any opening bid at the one level that by partnership agreement can be made on less that 12 hcp is a special understanding" can legally be made. Who is to stop them? I had a director bleating at me the other day "a cue bid shows an ace or a void, a cue bid shows an ace or a void, baa, baa".

 

Anyway this is my final post on this as I am getting too bloody angry. The upshot is that regulating partnership agreements about normal natural bids IS regulating style and judgement.

 

They should not have done it.

The consequences will be huge.

Trust me

[paulg]

If your faith in the competence and integrity of your local bridge organisation is so poor that this law change is considered a major problem, then you are in trouble whatever the laws say.

 

The new laws are not the problem here.

 

Paul

[1eyedjack]

There is I think something to gerry's concerns, in that:

 

Laws are only changed as a result of positive pressure to do so. There must have been a perceived flaw in the original laws for anyone to go to the trouble of changing them. Those who were instrumental in driving forward these changes were, I suspect, broadly the same individuals as those who wield power in the sponsoring organisations.

 

In other words, we can probably expect a positive and concerted move by the sponsoring organisations to make use of the new licence granted to them, as they are unlikely to have gone to so much trouble for no purpose, and it was they who went to the trouble of bringing about the changes to the laws. It would be naive to think that they have gone to all that trouble without intending to take advantage of the result.

 

Nor am I entirely convinced by the argument that the laws have simply been changed to bring them in line with prevailing practice. "If you can't beat it, legalise it". Everyone drives at 80 in a 70 zone. Change it to an 80 zone and they will all just start driving at 90.

 

I am mainly in favour of granting as much power as possible to those in direct charge of events. Therein lies a mechanism to have a diverse variety of events that cater for a wide spectrum of the playing population. At local club level, the club's committee are the best placed individuals to determine the preferences of the club's members, not some centralised authority hundreds of miles away.

 

Where I perceive a possible problem is if the National Organisations, who lobbied for this change, accept the devolved powers as licence to issue regulations without in turn allowing that power to filter down the ranks and in turn delegate powers to those at ground level. The effect of this would be manifest in national competitions, for which the NBO is the SO. But local clubs would be largely unaffected and might even benefit.

[helene_t]

At our Christmas drive, we play under some rules that deviate from the laws. No problem.

 

The new law is a signal: you can set up an event with restrictions on natural bidding agreements and WBF may still consider it serious competition.

 

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. The idiosyncrasy of the Dutch AC has been discussed here already, and the Amsterdam district is even worse, making rules that are not only illegal and moronic but also completely incoherent. And Netherlands, with some 150,000 BF members, is, relatively speaking, not even a banana republic, bridgewise.

 

OK, the Dutch AC controversy is about conventions rather than natural agreements so this example may be off target. Then think of the BBO tourneys with rules as "no psyches" or "no 1NT with a stiff". Fine for the Christmas drive but someone need to make clear that serious bridge requires serious laws. Granting amateuristic local authorities more power to make their own messy laws is a step in the wrong direction.

[mgoetze]

True, but in reality regulating agreements IS regulating people's bids. Any non new partnership has imlicit agreements about everything. My partnerships understandings about when to open 1H might well be too hard for a new player to understand and if there are a few of them in the field they can tell us our understanding is 'special' and ban it. That applies to every call we make. They can now decide that all of them are special understandings. They can keep deciding that until we transform our system into exactly what they desire.

You think too complicated. They'll just disallow agreements about bids other than 3NT except the agreement that they all show exactly 37 HCP. (You'd be free to show distribution and/or which HCP you're missing with all those different bids, of course.)